Smartphones are devices running feature rich operating systems such as Symbian, PalmOS, Microsoft WinCE, BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless) and Java MIDP compliant devices. Due to the complex nature and multitude of new features, these Smartphone devices are difficult to configure; compounded with limited keyboards, entering information such as personal details and configuration settings is not only difficult but also highly prone to human errors. A combination of complex features and associated configuration requirements requires great improvement upon current customer support solutions for wireless network operators.
With the wide availability of downloadable services and applications available for Smartphone users and the increasing costs of customer care, ensuring efficient and less-cumbersome support when problems arise is an increasing necessity. In contrast to traditional customer service applications that are available in Contact Center's today, CSRs (Customer Service Representatives) must undertake the extensive and time-consuming task of asking customer's complex questions pertaining to their wireless devices for problem diagnosis. This requires CSRs to be experts on Smartphones and their applications, and also requires customers to spend increased time on the telephone to receive support for their applications. The result is increased support costs, increased call handling times, complex diagnostic processes and overall frustration.
The current method of call routing is based on a simple queue where the next available CSR gets the next call. In this method there is no specialization since each CSR can get a call related to any phone or problem. Each CSR is a generalist and tries to solve all sorts of problems.
Gathering and obtaining Smartphone information required for diagnostics is manual and therefore complex, time consuming and prone to human errors. This problematic approach is an ineffective method of just-in-time customer support and does not guarantee effective problem resolution. This current method of call routing leave both the subscribers and customer support staff frustrated. In addition, obtaining diagnostic information requires a specialized support staff and Contact Centers must therefore hire and train specialized staff for specific tasks. For the Service Provider this means increased hiring and operational costs.
The customer support process is increasing in complexity. The level of expertise required by the CSR to understand numerous Smartphone devices and to search for up-to-date configuration data leads to increased costs in training, call-durations, and the overall operational costs.
With the emergence of Smartphones and wireless PDAs and their ability to download and install applications, the wireless industry is poised to see explosive growth in application usage by subscribers. Mobile operator customer care centers are focused on solutions for closed, voice-centric mobile phones. This infrastructure is not suited to efficiently solve the intelligent mobile data device and application problems described above. The proliferation of next generation “Smartphone” devices and the level of issues and problem solving needed has made existing customer care applications obsolete or unsuitable to meet these emerging business needs.
In general, incoming calls from callers to a call center supported by an operator network goes into a queue, called the incoming call queue. Irrespective of phone and subscriber profile each person who responds to a call is a generalist. Often, nothing is known about the subscriber, and even less about the subscriber's device, when a subscriber makes a call for customer service into an operator's call center. Several minutes are initially taken up just to collect the most basic information about the subscriber and the subscriber's device.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.